November 11: Tangled Party...the cake!

So we finally had Audrey's birthday party on Friday night.   I am still recovering!  The party went well, and I really think Audrey loved every second of it.  She was so excited and happy; it was a lot of fun to watch her.

She wanted a Rapunzel party, so I decided to go with a Tangled theme.  We really like the movie Tangled, and since many of Audrey's friends are boys, I thought Tangled would be better for them rather than a pretty princess party.  Plus, there are lots of fun ideas out there for parties based on the Tangled movie.

I'm going to break up my party posts into different parts, so as not to bore you with one incredibly long blog post.  So let's start with the cake!

Cake decorating is not my best skill, and I have had some very stressful moments making cakes for past parties.  This year, in one of my crazier moments of party planning, I decided to make a Rapunzel doll cake for Audrey this year.  I remember my mom making doll cakes for me when I was a girl, and I wanted to try my hand at it myself.

And actually, it was a much easier process than I expected.  I used Pampered Chef's large batter bowl, following the instructions on their website.  I baked two cakes with the batter bowl.

 I also wrapped Rapunzel's legs and hair in plastic wrap to help keep her clean.

I followed the instructions on how to cut the two cakes to form the dress.  Then I crumb coated the cake with icing and put it in the freezer for 20 minutes.  When I took it out of the freezer, everything was looking good.  Until I put Rapunzel into the cake.

 Rapunzel was definitely too tall for the cake.  I'm not sure what happened, as I really thought I followed the directions.  Upon further investigation, I saw that the Pampered Chef recipe says to use an 11 inch doll.  The Rapunzel doll I bought was 12 inches...so that could explain why her legs didn't fit in the cake!

My amazing husband gave me the idea to use the extra part of the cake that I cut off to form another layer on top.  With a little cutting and gluing together with icing, I was able to form the cake around the rest of Rapunzel's legs.  The end result...a cake with a perfect dress shape that covered all of Rapunzel's legs!  Whew, that was a close call!


For the icing, I used this buttercream frosting recipe.  It was super easy, it tasted good, and it was really easy to work with when icing both the cake and the cupcakes.  I also borrowed Pampered Chef's Easy Accent Decorator from a friend and that was a huge help.  So much easier than dealing with icing bags!  It is most definitely going to be on my Christmas wish list.

Here is the final result.  My only frustration is that when I went to color the pink icing, the food coloring came out too fast.  The pink ended up being much brighter than I had planned, and it didn't quite match Rapunzel's dress. 

I decided that the key to success in cake decorating is patience.  I don't have a lot of patience, but I kept forcing myself to slow down and be patient on this cake, and I am pretty pleased with the final product.  Maybe cake decorating isn't so bad after all.